50
by A.S. Mitchell
Summary: 50 word prompts, 50 sentences. Writing exercise. Orphan. Includes all main characters. No order.


_I've seen 50 sentence challenges before and thought it would be a good way to get back into writing. Some probably aren't as well as others, but all in all I'm content with the turn out. I apologize in advance if anyone takes offense to the term "hearing impaired."_

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**#01 – Comfort**

Max never hears her mother wake with a scream of terror, nor does she hear the stifled sobs or her fathers' attempts to comfort the grieving mother; but the dark circles and raw spots around Kate's eyes in the morning always inform her of what she's missed in the night.

**#02 – Kiss**

Danny decided long ago that he was too old for goodnight kisses, though he sometimes wished he could take those words back, especially now, with his parents wrapped around Esther's little finger.

**#03 – Soft**

Kate hummed quietly in her sleep, feeling soft fingertips trace her bare shoulder.

**#04 – Pain**

She screamed out in agony as Esther ripped unborn Baby Jessica out of her without so much as blinking, and woke with a start, terrified by what she had dreamt.

**#05 – Potatoes**

Esther helped Kate peel the potatoes, keeping an unusually watchful eye on John.

**#06 – Rain**

Max loved thunderstorms, loved to feel the thunder rumble in the ground beneath her, loved the sight of lightning flashing in the sky.

**#07 – Chocolate**

Hands trembling, Kate bit her lip and forced the taste of wine from her mouth, instead making herself a cup of cocoa that she did not enjoy one bit but forced herself to drink.

**#08 – Happiness**

"You were right, Kate, Esther was the missing piece to this family," John agreed, head in his wife's lap.

**#09 – Telephone**

Max watched her father talk on the phone longingly, hoping one day for a TTY.

**#10 – Ears**

Danny's entire face began to redden, even his ears, and he mumbled something about Esther being a rotten jerk before marching up to his room.

**#11 – Name**

Max's face lit up like a Christmas tree as Esther signed **HELLO M A X, MY NAME E S T H E R.**

**#12 – Sensual**

John loved the look on her face, the look that she used to give him before she'd lost the baby, the look that said I need you.

**#13 – Death**

"Have you ever seen a dead person before?" Esther signed to Max, making her blood run cold.

**#14 – Sex**

Sometimes Esther would stay up past her bedtime, painting the night away as she listened to John and Kate making love, and with each stroke of the brush, her rage grew.

**#15 – Touch**

Months after Max's accident, John still couldn't bring himself to be intimate with Kate.

**#16 - Weakness**

"I feel as though I've gotten better," Kate tells her psychiatrist, "but it's still there, that voice calling to me- does that make me crazy?"

**#17- Tears**

Her cheeks were raw and frozen as she trudged through the snow behind Esther, still in shock over what they'd just done to that poor nun.

**#18 – Speed**

Danny's heart beat wildly in his chest as he lay awake in bed, terrified that any moment he would blink, and there would be Esther, looming over him with that piercing stare.

**#19 – Wind**

Another gust of wind sent a page from Esther's torn and tattered bible into the air as she walked along the playground.

**#20 – Freedom**

Kate hugged Max and sobbed in a mixture of sadness and joy as the cold settled into her bones on the frozen pond.

**#21 – Life**

As an aging Kate sits in her armchair, a warm fire crackling a short distance away, she can't help but think of her late husband and the life he never had a chance to live with her.

**#22 - Jealousy**

"She's doing it again," Danny muttered to himself after Esther dragged their father away to be her next painting project.

**#23 – Hands**

Sometimes Max wishes that her hands could be just her hands, but then she realizes that they're something much more important: they're her world.

**#24 – Taste**

Danny heard his mother calling frantically him, but his eyes refused to open, and when he moved his mouth to speak, he tasted only blood.

**#25 – Devotion**

"No, sweetie," John said, cupping the side of Esther's face, "we won't get tired of you, Esther, you can stay with us forever."

**#26 – Forever**

"We'll be together forever," Esther assured her, and Max wasn't sure why, but the way Esther said it made a chill run up her spine.

**#27 – Blood**

Max kept piling fresh snow on top of the bloodied areas, afraid of what Esther might do to her if she refused.

**#28 – Sickness**

"Daddy," Esther (then Johanna) cried, after poorly hiding a bottle of rat poison in her mother Michelle's pantry closet, "I don't feel good!"

**#29 – Melody**

Esther always seemed to want Kate to sing or play the piano when around Max, and although she tried not to let it bother her, it sometimes did.

**# 30 – Star**

Kate sighed, curled up in front of the window, watching the stars twinkle and listening to the sounds of the house settling in the night.

**#31 – Home**

It felt awful thinking so, and terribly depressing, but to Kate, home had never really felt like home until after John and Esther had died, and the thought troubled her greatly.

**#32 – Confusion**

John rubbed his forehead and sank into the couch, his mind reeling.

**#33 – Fear**

Max froze in utter terror, her heart leaping into her throat; without the help of her hearing aids she had no idea just how quiet or loud she was being, and she had no clue as to where Esther was.

**#34 – Lightning/Thunder**

One evening during a storm, Daniel shot up in bed, swearing up and down that he had seen someone on the other side of the room watching him sleep, but upon further investigation, the room was empty.

**#35 – Bonds**

It made Max sick to think back on the connection she thought she and Esther were making.

**#36 – Market**

Cell phone clutched tightly in his hand, John felt the blood drain from his face as the automated doors opened, revealing the bright, shiny supermarket and its many isles of doom.

**#37 – Technology**

To break the ice with hearing children or other kids who have never met a hearing impaired person before, Max tells them she has robot ears, and they gasp in surprise and ask to see, and Max, delighted, shows them.

**#38- Gift**

She never expected Esther would do something as horrible as she had done that day, and to proclaim it a gift only added injury to the insult.

**#39 – Smile**

Kate smiled and gently clasped Daniel's shoulder, who wearily smiled back from his hospital bed.

**#40 – Innocence**

"That innocent look didn't even work when you were Max's age," John told his son as he smirked and pointed upstairs to the boys room.

**#41 – Completion**

Esther hung another picture on her wall, smiling wickedly at the thought of what lie underneath each of her works.

**#42 – Clouds**

"Aren't they beautiful?" Esther says aloud, and Danny just raises his brows in annoyance and stocks away, leaving Max to stare up at the clouds dumbly, wondering what Esther sees in them.

**#43 – Sky**

"Dad _doesn't_ live in the sky with Jessica, Max!" Daniel screams at the top of his lungs, but then instantly regrets it when he sees the look in her eyes.

**#44 – Heaven**

Max loved watching her mother sign the word '_Heaven_,' it made her think of angel dust whirling around, collecting up all the little baby's souls and guiding them straight to the sky.

**#45 – Hell**

If there was a hell, Kate thought bitterly, Esther would burn there for all eternity.

**#46 – Sun**

Max make-believes that when the sun comes out bad things don't happen, that when the lights are on everything is safe- a part of her knows better, though she doesn't want to believe in such things.

**#47 – Moon**

If he stares long enough, he swears he can see her face in the moon, and it's truly unsettling because a part of him honestly believes that even there, she'll find them.

**#48 – Waves**

Kate leaned over the toilet for the third time this week, her stomach churning and the bile rising in her throat as she shut her eyes and tried to block out John's dead eyes staring up at her, laughing and crying at the irony of her situation.

**#49 – Hair**

Some nights, when she was still half awake, she swore she could smell his shampoo, and she always woke with mascara streaks on her pillow.

**#50 – Hunger**

Other nights, she lies awake, hungering for the feel of his lips pressed against hers, and she feels an indescribable agony rise up within her being at the unfairness of it all.


End file.
